Editorial: Albany rush jobs are no way to legislate

New Yorkers surely will hope that, over time, a provocative tax-incentive plan will do what is intended: Create businesses and jobs, especially in the hard-pressed areas upstate.

But, once again, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the majority of state legislators blatantly got the process backward. They approved the legislation, with the public getting a better handle of the ramifications only after the fact. The public deserves far better.

Toward the end of the legislative session, Cuomo pushed hard for lawmakers to approve the creation of tax-free business zones in and around higher-education campuses. Specifically, the program - known as START-UP NY - will allow businesses to avoid paying taxes for up to 10 years if they create jobs and locate near participating college campuses.

It's not a terrible concept, but it needed far more vetting.

Colleges and universities are tremendous economic engines in New York, especially upstate. And with the state closing more prisons and developmental centers, communities need to offset the corresponding job losses with other opportunities, such as offered in this initiative. Far too often, New York also is losing its best and brightest, with students graduating from higher education institutions here but then leaving the state to pursue their careers.

Yet lawmakers ran with the tax-incentive concept without much information and with little debate about how precisely it will work. In fact, when passing it in the last week of session in June, lawmakers had little idea what, if any, impact the START-UP NY would have on the state budget. Last week, they - and the public - were hit with some numbers by the Cuomo administration. New York projects to take in $323 million less revenue as a result of approving the plan, something that wasn't counted on when lawmakers approved the budget in March.

Cuomo could have - and should have - offered up the tax incentive plan much earlier in the session so that legislators could have vigorously debated the matter and crunched the numbers. Or he should have waited and called a special session - after all, few things are as important as efforts to revive the economy. The public, too, should have been given far more chances to weigh in.

Even when the governor and state lawmakers are tackling the right issues, their legislative process continues to be dreadful and far too secretive. Too many ideas are being turned into legislation in haste and rammed through the legislature at the last minute.

Cuomo and legislators should have learned their lessons from the backlash over the way in which they enacted controversial gun laws earlier this year, and the fact that, while the budget was done on time, many of the votes came in the wee hours of the morning.

End results, of course, are critically important, but an orderly, fair and deliberative process are far more likely to produce stronger and better outcomes. The state continues to operate in a woefully deficient manner, and the handling of this tax-incentive plan is just the latest in a string of examples that the governor and the legislature has the power, and duty, to stop.

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Editorial: Albany rush jobs are no way to legislate

New Yorkers surely will hope that, over time, a provocative tax-incentive plan will do what is intended: Create businesses and jobs, especially in the hard-pressed areas upstate.